The refers to a political rally that took place in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, on June 22, 1908. In the mixed political climate of the late Meiji and early Taishō period, celebrated political activist and

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...

Koken Yamaguchi was discharged from a term in prison. His release was met with by crowd waving red flags carrying Anarchist Communist slogans such as and and a chorus of communist songs. The police attacked and suppressed the small demonstration, and ten prominent activists, including

Ōsugi Sakae was a radical Japanese anarchist. He published numerous anarchist periodicals, helped translate western anarchist essays into Japanese for the first time, and created Japan's first Esperanto school in 1906. He, Itō Noe, and his nephew were mu ...

Hitoshi Yamakawa was a Japanese revolutionary socialist who played a leading role in founding the Japanese Communist Party in 1922. He was also a founding member of the Rono-ha (Labour-Farmer Faction), a group of Marxist thinkers opposed to the Comintern. His ...

Kanno Sugako , also known as , was a Japanese anarcha-feminist journalist. She was the author of a series of articles about gender oppression, and a defender of freedom and equal rights for men and women. In 1910, she was accused of treason by the Japanese g ...

, and

Kanson Arahata a.k.a. was a 20th-century Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extend ...

, were arrested. In later trials, most of the arrested were found guilty and received sentences of one year or more, with Ōsugi receiving the longest prison term (of two and a half years). Although a relatively minor event in the complicated history of Meiji politics, it gained notability later, when the incarceration of certain participants in the rally (including Ōsugi, Yamakawa and Arahata) protected them from being involved in a much more prominent crackdown, the

High Treason Incident The , also known as the , was a socialist-anarchist plot to assassinate the Japanese Emperor Meiji in 1910, leading to a mass arrest of leftists, and the execution of 12 alleged conspirators in 1911. Investigation On 20 May 1910, the police sear ...

, which resulted in a number of activists being sentenced to death. This incident marked the start of stronger government action against the socialist movement in Japan.

References

{{reflist Anarchism in Japan Anti-anarchism 1908 in Japan Politics of the Empire of Japan Meiji socialism

See also

References